One of my coworkers in 2011 is a home brewer (Hidden Fish Brewhouse). She challenged me to create some beer labels for a batch they were making for her friends’ engagement. The friends’ names were Dan and Tae, thus the combination creates a misspelled play on the name of the famous Dante who wrote The Divine Comedy.

Design Brief

• Brew #1: Dantae‘s Inferno: Brown (spiced) ale with smoke & fire
• Brew #2: Dantae’s Paradiso: Brown (honey) ale with smoke & sweet
• Alcohol:  6%
• Brewery: Hidden Fish Brewhouse (어은주조)
• Brewed: 2011.9.25
• Deadline: 2 weeks

My Design Notes

• These are two beers labels for a couple (Dan & Tae)
• Oval, circular, or square shapes are all OK – no wrap-around
• These will be print on stickers – need to be able to cut out and paste
• Brown Ales (like Newcastle)
• Show some similarity in design between the two

Font ideas:

• Pimp My Ride (Dolphins) font
• Mason serif
• Mason sans-serif

Label ideas:

• Devil / Angel – cartoony
• Devil in the lower-left, turned away, looking back
• Angel in the upper-right, turned toward us, looking down
• For the text wrap-around the label
  • “Dantae’s” up top
  • Second word on bottom, inside some old style cloth or banners
• Make stylized text taking up much of the space of the center of the label with the devil and angel looking at them

The 9 Circles of Hell:

Famous line “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” John Ciardi (1977)

1. Limbo
2. Lust
3. Gluttony
4. Greed
5. Anger
6. Heresy
7. Violence
8. Fraud
9. Treachery

9 Circles of Heaven:

1. The Moon (The Inconstant)
2. Mercury (The Ambitious)
3. Venus (The Lovers)
4. The Sun (The Wise)
5. Mars (The Warriors of the Faith)
6. Jupiter (The Just Rulers)
7. Saturn (The Contemplatives)
8. The Fixed Stars (Faith, Hope, and Love)
9. The Primum Mobile (The Angels)

The Designs

These don’t have super strong colors, but they have some cool vintage elements and artwork, and each label has some unique aspects. (I just had to make a Purgatorio one as well to round out the set).

1. Inferno has strong corners, red colors and Satan (it was first designed).
2. Purgatorio has grunge corners, depressing blue colors, is made “with smoke & bitterness” (I figure purgatory must be pretty depressing and bitter since people are being “purged” of all their sins). It includes an image of Dante getting on a boat in Purgatory – as if awaiting his fate.
3. Paradiso has ornamental corners (appropriate for heaven), lighter colors (HTML goldenrod1), and an image of the Empyrean Heaven.

Each label also includes a quote from the Divine Comedy wrapped around the vintage frame.

1. Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
2. Purgatorio: “Your earthly fame is but a gust of wind.”
3. Paradiso: “And in His will is our peace.”

From my email:

Each also includes alcohol content, brewery, and brewing date. I didn’t know the volume of your bottles so I didn’t add 333ml or anything like that.

I also didn’t know the color of your bottles, so I just found some generic brown bottles to attach the labels to virtually in Photoshop – and I colored the bottle caps appropriately.

They are 4″ wide by 3″ tall, so should be 2 per page comfortably (vertically), or MAYBE 4 per page if you squeeze them on in landscape.

Gallery